The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth Volume I Part 22

On the 16th of February Maria Edgeworth read out to her father the first chapter of _Ormond_ in the carriage going to Pakenham Hall to see Lord Longford's bride. It was the last visit that Mr. Edgeworth paid anywhere. He had expressed a wish to his daughter that she should write a story as a companion to _Harrington_, and in all her anguish of mind at his state of health, she, by a remarkable effort of affection and genius, produced the earlier gay and brilliant pages of _Ormond_--some of the gayest and most brilliant she ever composed. The interest and delight which her father, ill as he was, took in this beginning, encouraged her to go on, and she completed the story. _Harrington_, written as an apology for the Jews, had dragged with her as she wrote it, and it dragged with the public. But in _Ormond_ she was on Irish ground, where she was always at her very best. Yet the characters of King Corny and Sir Ulick O'Shane, and the many scenes full of wit, humour, and feeling, were written in agony of anxiety, with trembling hand and tearful eyes. As she finished chapter after chapter, she read them out--the whole family a.s.sembling in her father's room to listen to them. Her father enjoyed these readings so exceedingly, that she was amply rewarded for the efforts she made.

MARIA _to_ MISS RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _May 31, 1817._

This day, so anxiously expected, has arrived--the only birthday of my father's for many, many years which has not brought unmixed feelings of pleasure. He had had a terrible night, but when I went into his room and stood at the foot of his bed, his voice was strong and cheerful, as usual. I put into his hand the hundred and sixty printed pages of _Ormond_ which kind-hearted Hunter had successfully managed to get ready for this day. How my dear father can, in the midst of such sufferings, and in such an exhausted state of body, take so much pleasure in such things, is astonis.h.i.+ng. Oh, my dear Sophy, what must be the fund of warm affection from which this springs! and what infinite, exquisite pleasure to me! "Call Sneyd directly," he said, and swallowed some stir-about, and said he felt renovated. Sneyd was seated at the foot of his bed.

"Now, Maria, dip anywhere, read on." I began: "King Corny recovered."

Then he said, "I must tell Sneyd the story up to this."

And most eloquently, most beautifully did he tell the story. No mortal could ever have guessed that he was an invalid, if they had only _heard_ him _speak._ Just as I had here stopped writing my father came out of his room, looking wretchedly, but ordered the carriage, and said he would go to Longford to see Mr. Fallon about materials for William's bridge. He took with him his three sons, and "Maria to read _Ormond_"--great delight to me. He was much pleased, and this wonderful father of mine drove all the way to Longford: forced our way through the tumult of the most crowded market I ever saw--his voice heard clear all the way down the street--stayed half an hour in the carriage on the bridge talking to Mr. Fallon; and we were not home till half-past six.

He could not dine with us, but after dinner he sent for us all into the library. He sat in the arm-chair by the fire; my mother in the opposite arm-chair, Pakenham in the chair behind her, Francis on a stool at her feet, Maria beside them; William next, Lucy, Sneyd; on the sofa opposite the fire, as when you were here, Honora, f.a.n.n.y, Harriet, and Sophy; my aunts next to my father, and Lovell between them and the sofa. He was much pleased at Lovell and Sneyd's coming down for this day.

Mr. Edgeworth died on the 13th of June, in his seventy-second year. He had been--by his different wives--the father of twenty-two children, of whom thirteen survived him. The only son of his second marriage, Lovell Edgeworth, succeeded to Edgeworthstown, but persuaded his stepmother and his numerous brothers and sisters still to regard it as a home.

To enable the reader to understand the relations.h.i.+ps of the large family circle, it may be well to give the children of Mr. Edgeworth.

1st marriage with Anna Maria Elers.

Richard, b. 1765; d. s.p. 1796.

Maria, b. 1767; d. unmarried, 1849.

Emmeline married, 1802, John King, Esq.

Anna, married, 1794, Dr. Beddoes.

2nd marriage with Honora Sneyd.

Lovell, b. 1776; d. unmarried, 1841.

Honora, d. unmarried, 1790.

3rd marriage with Elizabeth Sneyd.

Henry, b. 1782; d. unmarried, 1813.

Charles Sneyd, b. 1786; d .s.p. 1864.

William, b. 1788; d. 1792.

Thomas Day, b. 1789; d. 1792.

William, b. 1794; d. s.p. 1829.

Elizabeth, d. 1800.

Caroline, d. 1807.

Sophia, d. 1785.

Honora, married, 1831, Admiral Sir J. Beaufort, and died, his widow, 1858.

4th marriage with Frances Anna Beaufort.

Francis Beaufort, b. 1809; married, 1831, Rosa Florentina Eroles, and had four sons and a daughter. The second son, Antonio Eroles, eventually succeeded his uncle Sneyd at Edgeworthstown.

Michael Pakenham, b. 1812; married, 1846, Christina Macpherson, and had issue.

Frances Maria (f.a.n.n.y), married, 1829, Lestock P. Wilson, Esq., and died, 1848.

Harriet, married, 1826, Rev. Richard Butler, afterwards Dean of Clonmacnoise.

Sophia, married, 1824, Barry Fox, Esq. and d. 1837.

Lucy Jane, married, 1843, Rev. T.R. Robinson, D.D.

During the months which succeeded her father's death, Maria wrote scarcely any letters; her sight caused great anxiety. The tears, she said, felt in her eyes like the cutting of a knife. She had overworked them all the previous winter, sitting up at night and struggling with her grief as she wrote _Ormond_; and she was now unable to use them without pain.

In October she went to Black Castle, and remained there till January 1818, having the strength of mind to abstain almost entirely from reading and writing.

It required all Maria Edgeworth's inherited activity of mind, and all her acquired command over herself, to keep up the spirits of her family on their return to Edgeworthstown: from which the master-mind was gone, and where the light was quenched. But, notwithstanding all the depression she felt, she set to work immediately at what she now felt to be her first duty--the fulfilment of her father's wish that she should complete the Memoirs of his life, which he had himself begun. Yet her eyes were still so weak that she seldom allowed herself what had been her greatest relaxation--writing letters to her friends.

MARIA _to_ MRS. RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Jan. 24, 1818._

My dearest aunt and friend--friend of my youth and age, and beloved sister of my father, how many t.i.tles you have to my affection and grat.i.tude, and how delightful it is to me to feel them all! Since I have parted from you, I have felt still more than when I was with you the peculiar value to me of your sympathy and kindness. I find my spirits sink beyond my utmost effort to support them when I leave you, and they rise involuntarily when I am near you, and recall the dear trains of old a.s.sociations, and the mult.i.tude of ideas I used to have with him who is gone for ever. Thank you, my dear aunt, for your most kind and touching letter. You have been for three months daily and hourly soothing, and indulging, and nursing me body and mind, and making me forget the sense of pain which I could not have felt suspended in any society but yours.

My uncle's opinion and hints about the Life I have been working at this whole week. Nothing can be kinder than Lovell is to all of us.

I have read two-thirds of Bishop Watson's life. I think he bristles his independence too much upon every occasion, and praises himself too much for it, and above all complains too much of the want of preferment and neglect of him by the Court. I have Madame de Stael's Memoirs of her father's private life: I have only read fifty pages of it--too much of a French eloge--too little of his private life. There is a _Notice_ by Benjamin Constant of Madame de Stael's life prefixed to this work, which appears to me more interesting and pathetic than anything Madame de Stael has yet said of her father.

_February 21._

I must and will write to my Aunt Ruxton to-day, if the whole College of Physicians, and the whole conclave of cardinal virtues, with Prudence pr.i.m.m.i.n.g up her mouth at the head of them, stood before me. I entirely agree with you, my dearest aunt, on one subject, as indeed I generally do on most subjects, but particularly about _Northanger Abbey_ and _Persuasion._ The behaviour of the General in _Northanger Abbey_, packing off the young lady without a servant or the common civilities which any bear of a man, not to say gentleman, would have shown, is quite outrageously out of drawing and out of nature. _Persuasion_-- excepting the tangled, useless histories of the family in the first fifty pages--appears to me, especially in all that relates to poor Anne and her lover, to be exceedingly interesting and natural. The love and the lover admirably well drawn: don't you see Captain Wentworth, or rather don't you in her place feel him taking the boisterous child off her back as she kneels by the sick boy on the sofa?

And is not the first meeting after their long separation admirably well done? And the overheard conversation about the nut? But I must stop: we have got no farther than the disaster of Miss Musgrave's jumping off the steps.

I am going on, but very slowly, and not to my satisfaction with my work.

_To_ MRS. SNEYD EDGEWORTH.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _March 27._

I agree with you in thinking the _MS. de Sainte-Helene_ a magnificent performance. My father was strongly of opinion that it was not written by Buonaparte himself, and he grounded this opinion chiefly upon the pa.s.sages relative to the Duc d'Enghien: _c'etait plus qu'un crime, c'etait une faute_; no man, he thought, not even Nero, would, in writing for posterity say that he had committed a crime instead of a fault. But it may be observed that in the Buonaparte system of morality which runs through the book, nothing is considered what we call a crime, unless it be what he allows to be a fault. His proof that he did not murder Pichegru is, that it would have been useless. Le _cachet de_ Buonaparte is as difficult to imitate as _le cachet de Voltaire._ I know of but three people in Europe who could have written it: Madame de Stael, Talleyrand, or M. Dumont. Madame de Stael, though she has the ability, could not have got so plainly and shortly through it. Talleyrand has _l'esprit comme un demon_, but he could not for the soul of him have refused himself a little more wit and wickedness. Dumont has not enough audacity of mind.

_To_ MRS. STARK. [Footnote: Daughter of Mr. Bannatyne, of Glasgow.]

SPRING FARM, N.T. MOUNT KENNEDY, _June_ 1818.

I am, and have been ever since I could any way command my attention, intent upon finis.h.i.+ng those Memoirs of himself which my father left me to finish and charged me to publish. Yet I have accepted an invitation to Bowood, from Lady Lansdowne, whom I love, and as soon as I have finished I shall go there. As to Scotland, I have no chance of getting there at present, but if ever I go there, depend upon it, I shall go to see you. Never, never can I forget those happy days we spent with you, and the warmhearted kindness we received from you and yours: those were "sunny spots" in my life.

_To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH.

BOWOOD, _Sept._ 1818.

I will tell you how we pa.s.s our day. At seven I get up--this morning at half-past six, to have the pleasure of writing to you, my dearest mother, be satisfied I never write a word at night: breakfast is at half after nine, very pleasant: afterwards we all _stray_ into the library for a few minutes, and settle when we shall meet again for walking, etc.: then Lady Lansdowne goes to her dear dressing-room and dear children, Dumont to his attic, Lord Lansdowne to his out-of-door works, and we to our elegant dressing-room, and Miss Carnegy to hers. Between one and two is luncheon: happy time! Lady Lansdowne is so cheerful, polite, and easy, just as she was in her walks at Edgeworthstown: but very different walks are the walks we take here, most various and delightful, from dressed shrubbery and park walks to fields with inviting paths, wide downs, shady winding lanes, and happy cottages--not _dressed_, but naturally well placed, and with evidence in every part of their being suited to the inhabitants.

After our walk we dress and make haste for dinner. Dinner is always pleasant, because Lord and Lady Lansdowne converse so agreeably--Dumont also--towards the dessert. After dinner, we find the children in the drawing-room: I like them better and better the more I see of them. When there is company there is a whist table for the gentlemen. Dumont read out one evening one of Corneille's plays, "Le Florentin," which is beautiful, and was beautifully read. We asked for one of Moliere, but he said to Lord Lansdowne that it was impossible to read Moliere aloud without a quicker eye than he had _pour de certains propos_: however, they went to the library and brought out at last as odd a choice as could well be made, with Mr. Thomas Grenville as auditor, "Le vieux Celibataire," an excellent play, interesting and lively throughout, and the old bachelor himself a charming character. Dumont read it as well as Tessier could have read it; but there were things which seemed as if they were written on purpose for the Celibataire who was listening, and the Celibataire who was reading.